


faerytale

by peradi



Category: Jessica Jones (TV), Jessica Jones - Fandom
Genre: AU, F/F, Kidnapping, Kissing, True Love, Women Being Awesome, jessica saves the day, killgrave is a monster, threats of noncon that are never carried out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:59:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5338367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/pseuds/peradi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the damsel is distressing, the knight's armour is a little rusty, and the dragon has bitten off more than he can chew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	faerytale

On the third day, there is water that she cannot drink. 

She's bug-eyed with desperation and gluey-tongued with thirst. Lack of water kills surer than anything, and she's dizzy with want, fingers clutching and unclutching at empty air and a thin, high sound needles from the base of her throat; a sound of pure pain, the sound a dog might make after having a leg blown off. 

It's a feral note of  _want_ and  _oh kilgrave you **cunt**_ because the water is there, there and his voice loops in purple strands around her brain: don't touch. 

(don't touch don't touch)

And this is what being under Kilgrave's control is like: you're in a glass coffin, and you see everything around you, and you can't lift a finger because you're tied down and you're also drowning, drowning in water and in blood, and every time you open your mouth all you taste is iron. 

"Please," she whispers, and she's a strong woman, a brave woman, beautiful and sure of herself; she could break the skinny shit's arm with the flat of her palm, snapping hard against the spur of his elbow, but she's reduced to this: singing the high strange note of pain and panic, begging with a voice that she doesn't recognise as her own. 

Three days with no water will break a girl. 

"I don't want you dead," says Kilgrave, almost amicably. He's slick, greasy charm. He's expensive suits plastered over moldering maggotflesh soul, he's scum, he's got Trish's life in his hands and if she has to beg him, she will. She wants to live. She wants to live with a white-knuckled ferocity because she wants to live long enough to see Jessica pull Kilgrave's heart out through his asshole. 

 

\--

 

On the fourth day, there's conversation. 

"I don't know what she sees in you," says Kilgrave. Trish is mid-bite, inhaling down the stale sandwiches he's favoured her with, because she's learned that he's apt to snatch them away -- or else order her not to touch them, or order her to tear them to shreds and not eat, or order her to take her top off, use the component parts to cover herself. He's a sick son of a bitch, and she wants to flay him alive. 

But he speaks, and she's learned that it's best to speak back. "What do you mean?" 

"She wants you. It's sickening -- she wants you, she's  _in love_ with you," his lips curl around the word 'love' like it's venom. Shows teeth white and straight as snow-spikes. "I've watched you two," he adds, "for such a long time, and it's just disgusting. She's deluded herself into thinking that she'll be happy without me. Latched onto you like...like a puppy in from the cold.  _Well_. She always liked strays. My Jessica. What a heart on her. Don't you think? She tries to hide it, but that girl's got a heart big enough to hold the _world_."

In love, Trish thinks, and a strange warmth suffuses her bones. 

For once she thinks: he's right. 

Because he  _is_. Jessica likes to pretend that she's a thorny, spiked thing with a snowscape for a soul but she cares, cares so much, and she keeps all that caring secreted away in hidden, locked parts of herself.

Because of  _him_.

"She doesn't love me," Trish says, soft and gentle, because she's an actress and a good one, and she knows what she has to say to survive. 

 

\--

 

On the fifth day he kisses her. 

She bites down, bites hard, draws a bright bead of blood. He wipes it away, stares at the violence of colour on his pale skin like he can barely believe it belongs to him -- and then he backhands her across the face. 

"I could make you want me," he says, fingers clutching her chin, starpoints of pain, bruised bones. "I could  _make you want me_ \-- I could make you forget her."

You couldn't, Trish thinks and does not say. She struggles to breathe around the fury tightening her throat. You couldn't, not now and not ever.

"Do you love her?" he says. "Tell the truth."

And Trish, God help her, does. 

 

\--

 

General anesthetic. A pistol, a hard and bitter snap, and Kilgrave slumps boneless and useless to the ground.

Trish presses her face into the soft curve of Jessica's neck and does not weep. She breathes in bourbon-fumes, dive-bar, sweat, skin, the bite of salt and the flicker of cordite; iron and blood. 

 

\--

 

Then there is police, chaos, noise. Swirling brilliance.  Blue light ululating over slick ground, and someone drapes a foil blanket across Trish's shoulders.

(in shock, they say, look after yourself)

Jessica's eyes are as dark as the gulf between stars. Her mouth is purpled, scabbed, like she's gnawed her lips to shreds with worry. A soft fall of hair. Skin white as cream. 

Fire, fury, phoenix of a girl. 

"Trish --" she says, starts to say, and Trish sees (again) Kilgrave tumbling back, falling, falling, fallen.

"You're beautiful," says Trish -- and later there will be proper discussions, dates, romance, all that nonsense -- but now there is the smell of disaster, and there is Jessica. 

Trish kisses her, hard and hungry, and Jessica's mouth falls opens with shock; Trish licks her way past Jessica's teeth, devouring her -- and Jessica, after a moment of hesitation, kisses her back, sloppy and inelegant, fisting her hands in that ridiculous tumble of silver foil over her shoulders. 

"Looks like you've got your cape," she says, when they part. 

"Don't need one of those to be a hero," says Trish. 

"Cheesy," accuses Jessica, but her smile is nothing but giddy. 

"You love it," Trish says, bopping her nose against Jess's.

(she's right. she almost always is.)


End file.
